I've got a professor who consistently brings this "factoid" up in class as an example of information which is suppressed/ignored by the liberal media. He cites it as a matter of fact, further citing heavy tobacco intake by the Japanese, whom he cites as the nation with the longest life expectancy. Something about smokers--and kind of smokers--living longer, or at the very least experiecing no negative effects, strikes me as very, very wrong. Any input?

While almost all cigarette smokers inhale, most cigar smokers do not. Therefore, the risk of lung cancer is lower for cigar smokers than cigarette smokers. However, the risk increases with the more frequent cigar smoking and depth of inhalation. Studies show that men who smoke at least five cigars a day and report moderate inhalation, experience lung cancer deaths at about two-thirds the rate of men who smoke one pack of cigarettes a day.7

However it's not all good news as regards other smoking relating illnesses.

I'd be interested in finding out more about this as well, but on the face of it, it sounds like he's talking about a correlation that certainly doesn't show that pipe or cigar smoking is good for you.

So, if it's true that Japanese use more tobacco and also true that they live longer, that in itself doesn't say much. There are untold number of other factors that would enter into it -- diet, exercise, stress, disease, and crime, but more importantly genetics.

This also holds true with cigarette smoking in the U.S. IMHO, it is true that the media and the medical industry engage in a bit of fear-mongering when they constantly harp on smoking as a "killer." Plenty of lifetime smokers end up dying from something else. True, smoking is never good for you and contributes to bad overall health, but the insistence that cigarettes are "nails in your coffin" is just imagery designed to get you to quit. It's not wise to look for a reason not to quit, but if you want to know whether smoking is going to kill you, probably the best predictor is to look at your own family history as well as the general statistical information.

Two things lend non-scientific "credibility to this statement - the first is that, as Eddylizard mentions, that cigar and pipe smokers do not inhale as deeply as their cigarette smoking companions. The other is that there are (or have been) a lot of well known, long-lived, celebrities who smoke cigars - including George Burns, Groucho Marx, and Winston Churchil. Not exactly scientific or even "anecdote", but notoriet and exposure trump statistics.

There have been a number of studies that show pipe and cigar smokers get lung cancer less often that cigarette smokers. However, it's still much higher than non-smokers. In addition, pipe and cigar smokers have a higher frequency of lip, throat and tongue cancers than either the general non-smoking population or cigarette smokers..

Don't have the time to search for cites.

As a former pipe smoker of 30 years duration, I didn't give it up without a lot of kicking, screaming and crying.

As for the OP, maybe the professor also notes someone like Goerge Burns who lived to be pretty old(was it 100, can't remember if he made ti to his 100th B-day). Anyways, he was alwasy shown with a cigar in hand...however who knows how many he actually smoked a day. Course I knew a lady who got lung cancer, but she never smoked a day in her life.

I've got a professor who consistently brings this "factoid" up in class as an example of information which is suppressed/ignored by the liberal media. He cites it as a matter of fact, further citing heavy tobacco intake by the Japanese, whom he cites as the nation with the longest life expectancy. Something about smokers--and kind of smokers--living longer, or at the very least experiecing no negative effects, strikes me as very, very wrong. Any input?

I question the statistics. First, in my unscientific study, if you took the average lifespan of smokers in the US and compared it to the average lifespan of all citizens of, say, Zambia, where a person has an average lifespan of 38.44 years, you could make an uninformed conclusion that smokers live longer. Let's forget that I've no idea how many people in Zambia smoke or come into direct contact with 2nd hand smoke, or the fact that Zambia's health care pales in comparison with that of the United States.

Smokers and the smoking lobbies baffle me. There are direct correlations between lung cancer rates and smoking. Cigar smoking is generally done in a recreational environment, whereas cigarette smoking is generally a daily habit.

...Smokers and the smoking lobbies baffle me. There are direct correlations between lung cancer rates and smoking. Cigar smoking is generally done in a recreational environment, whereas cigarette smoking is generally a daily habit.

I think that's generally true, but from my experience habitual cigar smokers exist and recreational cigarette smoking is fairly common. I smoke both recreationally, though I'm much more likely to buy cigars and share them while I usually just bum cigarettes.

To clarify: He claims that pipe smokers live longer than the average citizen, cigarette smokers and non-cigarette smokers included.

In that case it's a somewhat dubious claim. Unless there is a magic ingredient in pipe tobacco, then pipe smokers are subject to all the other non-smoking related causes of death as anybody else. So I can't see thay could on average live any longer. Unless he's comparing Japanese pipe smokers with non smokers in other countries with poor diet, inadequate medical facilities or unhealthy lifestyles.

Maybe its a stress relief thing. I have noticed that pipe smokers have a kind of Zen thing going while puffing away, and perhaps this stress relief adds years to their lifespan, while subtracting a much smaller amount for the damage done by the smoking.

When I was trying to convince Mrs. Dinty to let me take up pipe-smoking (unsucessfully), I looked these statistics up, and found it to be true at some level. However, IIRC, the stats were provided by a pipe smokers' site, so who knows. I'll see if I can find it.

Also I think cigar/pipe smokers smoke less. I've never known someone smoke 20 cigars a day.

I think that's how many Ulysses S. Grant smoked. His death wasn't pleasant.

My question about the original post. Are pipe smokers wealthier than average? Maybe I'm just thinking of a stereotypical rich guy in his bathrobe lighting a pipe, but without controlling for wealth, a comparison of the life spans of pipe smokers and the rest of us won't necessarily reveal much.

When I was trying to convince Mrs. Dinty to let me take up pipe-smoking (unsucessfully), I looked these statistics up, and found it to be true at some level. However, IIRC, the stats were provided by a pipe smokers' site, so who knows. I'll see if I can find it.

If you don't mind me asking, are you being serious? Did you really ask your wife if you can smoke?

Don't you see, the liberal media has been hushing up True Facts with their Political Correctness Gone Maaaad so thoroughly that the only true source of information remaining is 'what some guy in the pub told me, and he seemed to know what he was talking about'. This source is unaffected by liberal sensitivities and, you know, evidence and suchlike.

Don't you see, the liberal media has been hushing up True Facts with their Political Correctness Gone Maaaad so thoroughly that the only true source of information remaining is 'what some guy in the pub told me, and he seemed to know what he was talking about'. This source is unaffected by liberal sensitivities and, you know, evidence and suchlike.

Maybe this accounts for the seemingly disproportionate number of conservative pot smokers I've known over the yeras. I've always thought it was odd that they wouldn't align themselves with those seeking legalization, etc. But apparently they were more caught up in the possibility that the 'liberal media' were telling lies about the effects of marijuana.